A Simple Critique of Religious Fundamentalism, Militant Atheism, and The Universe in General

A Critique of Religious Fundamentalism and Denial of Science

I have long since abandoned young earth creationism, the denial of basic science as a prerequisite for my belief in God. It caused me to completely lose my faith, it’s a miracle I came back to it. You cannot convince people to follow your religion if it denies basic science. Science is a tool we use to understand how the universe works, an indispensable tool. If you believe in God you cannot deny that science gives us the ability to truly understand HOW God works.

The Contradictions of The Atheist and the Fundamentalist

Science and religion are trying to answer different questions, do not use one to contradict the other unless the contradiction is already apparent. In the case or literalist interpretations of religious texts which deny basic science- you must have a non-literal view for such a belief to be valid, and the contradiction is already apparent and thus needs to be investigated and taken to its logical conclusion. In the case of militant atheism, the atheist concludes that all things have a scientific and materialist explanation and thus the need for a god is null. The contradiction here is that science, that materialism disproves god. It negates the belief that God works through the material conditions of the universe, that science and logic do not inherently contradict a belief in God. But to say that you can’t disprove something certainly isn’t an argument for something. I could say you have no evidence for unicorns but that isn’t much of an argument for unicorns. Of course God is a different matter as it is a relatively simple concept- that there is some conscious force that created the universe.

The Absurdity of The Universe

The universe as we understand it came into being out of nothing (which does not violate the laws of the very, very small). The belief that a God could come out of nothing is equally absurd. Yet the universe did in essence come out of nothing. What does this mean? That the more science explains the universe, the more the lens of true reality is set into focus the more it appears that reality itself is utterly and completely absurd. The logical conclusion is that there should be nothing, that nothing should exist. But instead something does exist, we exist, the universe exists. So who is to say that some primal consciousness did not thrust the universe into being, what is to prevent us from taking the extra step to come to this conclusion? Logic would dictate that the simplest solution is the most valid. But here we are talking about the origin of all logic, of all being itself.

A Final Conclusion

Ultimately we are just things thrust into existence without knowing why. For the wandering man to come to the conclusion that there is a why and there is some grand consciousness like himself which created the universe or that there is no why, that the universe just is- both conclusions from a mere logical perspective are equally absurd, and thus equally valid.